Much Ado About Passwords

Passwords; ah, a subject of which there is much attention spent; whether in debate about the finer points of security; to how practical it is to maintain; remember; or even come to terms with all these passwords for all these sites. I recently got a "ransom message" of sorts where they showed me 3 of my passwords; and threatened to expose to all my social media my online activity and webcam footage. I did not care about others knowing my online activity and webcam footage - as I have nothing of interest and nothing incriminating or worthy of judgement that I care about. What I did care about was the fact that the three passwords they showed were my most secure ones that I keep locked away in a digital password safe!

Crikey!

I started to think about how to handle my password security. Changing my passwords would not matter unless I found out how they pilfered it from my digital safe. I mean, as a computer guy, I had made it rather non-trivial by using a very sound password manager, used both a master password and an encryption key to keep it safe. Now, it is not at the level that Edward Snowden would  have approved of because of the line between security and convenience. I would either have more security at the expense of convenience; or more convenience at the expense of security.

I chose something in between, on the rationale that I would just go far enough on security to weed out all but the most determined ones. For many years, this served me well. Apparently, not any more.

There are other approaches:

1) Come up with different "keyhacks" where I choose a pattern by physically looking at the keyboard.

2) Use a system, or a forumla for generating my passwords that I can remember

3) Use the same passwords with different permutations, like different numbers and symbols

4) Use a combination of something I can easily remember with something else or three items mashed together

5) A combination of the above 4 in any order and differing quantity.

6) Use a physical password book and use a password generator

However, I dislike passwords and more and more sites were leaking password data without even knowing the password, so all this password complexity was effectively just security theater. Not a great use of my brain cells and energy.

I also do not have the brains or mental capacity or motivation to be paranoid.

I need something simple.

Stay tuned for the next article on what I am currently doing and the prep work I have started to do.

Until next time...